Thrifty Car Rental, a subsidiary of the Dollar Thrifty Automotive Group, said it is rolling out Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) to enable the automation of the vehicle check-in and check-out process.

The initial roll out covers all Thrifty rental locations and will be used by all delivery and pick up staff in Dubai and the Northern Emirates. Thrifty UAE is the first car rental company in the Middle East to introduce PDAs for vehicle check-in and check-out, a statement said.

The PDAs are linked to Thrifty’s Vehicle Management System and will replace the manual documentation process that is currently required to rent a car, which will significantly reduce administration time.

“The real-time solution will eliminate the downtime between customers signing vehicle check-in forms and the counter staff keying in data, increase staff productivity and enhance system accuracy,” explained Rahul Singh, general manager, Thrifty Car Rental.

“By introducing this technology we expect to significantly reduce our costs arising from non-revenue mileage, untraceable traffic fines and salik charges. This eco-friendly solution will reduce the amount of paperwork previously generated on a daily basis; based on our current transaction volumes we estimate that we will save approximately 1.5 million (A-4 size) sheets of paper annually across the UAE,” Singh concluded.

A total number of 70 PDAs (model number MC55) were provided by Motorola and its partner, Zultec Technical Services.

Thrifty expects all locations in Dubai and the Northern Emirates to be fully-automated by the end of June. The next phase of implementation will cover Abu Dhabi and Al Ain.-TradeArabia News Service